


To live

by orphan_account



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Daddy Issues, Eating Disorders, Fuckin FIGHT me, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sad with a Happy Ending, Uzumaki Naruto is a Good Friend, and i haven't revised this past a simple skim and its 1 am and i don't care, basically everyone is ooc, but its a fine line and i probably crossed it a few times, i tried not to glorify eating disorders, itachi is a good bro, sakura is barely involved, sasuke is a wreck, so be careful if you are easily triggered
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:04:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4372994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He makes himself a cup of broth (10 cal) and sips at it for half an hour, trying to remember what it felt like to eat and feel okay with it. At some point he had, he had eaten three meals a day and only vaguely been aware of what a calorie even was. But then his father was never satisfied, always needed better, and Sasuke leaned that the room for improvement was infinite, that being better was never perfect, was never good enough. He learned to control himself, to have complete and utter and perfect autonomy over his body, the only thing that was his, and he vowed to find peace, to accomplish perfection."</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>A glimpse into Sasuke's mind through a downward spiral of anorexia, and the way he scrabbles back out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To live

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING for the obvious, I suppose. Possible trigger for restrictive, disordered eating. I guess that won't really stop you at this point, but please be aware.

Lunch is always the hardest part of the day. He has three bad options, and most days, all of them seem impossible.

 

Option one is to sit with his friends, feel the anxious eyes and block out the way Sakura tuts at the water in front of him, shake his head as Naruto offers a fry, part of his sandwich, "please, I'll buy you anything, just eat something". It's harder than that, he wants to reply. I can't, I would if I could, don't look at me. Those days, no matter how many sweaters he has on, his friends seem to see right through. Neji grabs his wrist and his thumb meets his forefinger easily, with room to spare. Sasuke bites his lip, blocks out the protests, the "you need help", wills himself to disappear completely.

 

Option two is to sneak off to an empty classroom or the back of the library, ignoring the hunger pains and attempting to study. His friends will be mad,

 "Don't avoid me," says Naruto, but he looks more upset than angry, "stop trying to pretend that nothing's wrong"

But at lease he can escape the prying stares, the clawing feeling that everyone sees, everyone knows, everyone has judged him for what he is. Most days, that's the option he chooses.

 

Option three is to try to force something down. Those days, he sits with his brother, the only one who he can seem to bear watching him. Itachi never pushes, never gets emotional. Sasuke needs someone to talk, to distract him from what he's doing, and Itachi keeps him company, never gives any indication that what he's doing is good or bad, seems to quietly understand that he can't force Sasuke into anything. But it's hard, impossible, and most of the time, even those meals are meager and Sasuke is left feeling simultaneously stuffed to the brim, obese, disgustingly full, while his stomach still screams at him for sustenance. There is a massive overlap between more food than his mind can bear and less than his body needs, and it's absolutely exhausting. So lunch becomes hell, a daily reminder that things are not okay, that Sasuke is spinning out of control.

 

His father takes him clothing shopping to make sure that he looks acceptable. All of his old clothing has begun to look stupidly oversized. It's one of those rare times he feels attention, maybe not approval, but at least something from the man whose opinion has always seemed to mean too much. Sasuke steps out of the changing room in the smallest pair of black pants the store has in stock. His legs look spindly, oddly disproportionate to the oversized sweater he's drowned his upper half in. His father eyes him over, something like disapproval pulling the corners of his mouth down. "Have you gone through a growth spurt? You're looking skinny. Hopefully, soon you start to fill out."

They both know he hasn't, but talking about it is out of the question, so Sasuke just nods, picks at the hem of his shirt. He wants his father to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, beg him to just fucking eat, care that he's tearing himself apart, but perhaps it's impossible. Perhaps it will happen if he loses ten more pounds, twenty, a million.

 

Naruto comes over with bagels. Sasuke is studying, despite the fog in his head, sipping on tea to try to warm up. He stares at the bagel for a moment. It's warm and soft and has plain cream cheese, his favorite. It is heaven and hell in his hands, body and mind waging war, negotiating in quiet terms and he loses. He pretends to forget it while studying, and by the time Naruto notices he hasn't taken a bite, it's gone cold anyways. They end up fighting, and Naruto storms out the door,

"I can't stand this. You look like shit, you know, all bony and emaciated. I don't know what's so appealing about slowly killing yourself, I can't fucking figure it out."

Sasuke's hands shake the rest of the night. He makes himself a cup of broth (10 cal) and sips at it for half an hour, trying to remember what it felt like to eat and feel okay with it. At some point he had, he had eaten three meals a day and only vaguely been aware of what a calorie even was. But then his father was never satisfied, always needed better, and Sasuke leaned that the room for improvement was infinite, that being better was never perfect, was never good enough. He learned to control himself, to have complete and utter and perfect autonomy over his body, the only thing that was his, and he vowed to find peace, to accomplish perfection.

 

His body is his enemy, he thinks. It's lumpy and saggy and utterly gross. Fat is this impurity, this disgusting blemish to his person, and he wants to scrub it away, to take a knife and cut it off. But the lighter the scale tells him he becomes, the heavier he feels. His joints ache and his head throbs, and walking up stairs leaves him breathless and clutching at the banister to stay upright. The cold is a constant, settling deep in his bones and working it's way out from there. At night he piles on heated blankets to quell the shivering, by day he keeps his hands hidden so no one sees the purple tint. Naruto comes to watch a movie (he seems to be the only one that still bothers), and half way through, he notices Sasuke's teeth chattering. "Come here," he says, opening his arms, "I'll try to warm you up."

So Sasuke ends up enveloped in his friend,

"Just tell me if I'm crushing you, leaning on you like this"

"Shut up, you're a rake"

It's a bit warmer, that way. Sasuke dozes off like that, and Naruto does his best to stay still for the next few hours, relieved just to hear the boy breathing.

 

His father clears his throat, and Sasuke wearily looks up. He's trying to study, but it's getting harder and harder to focus. His brain is foggy all the time, distracted by calories and food and exercise and weight and the constant, gnawing hunger. His father looks uncomfortable and displeased.

"You're looking ill. You need to put on a bit of weight. Itachi says he hasn't seen you eat today."

Sasuke nods. He can't, though. He thought he wanted people to notice. He thought he wanted his father's concern. But now it only makes him uncomfortable, and he finds himself wishing no one had noticed. It's so much harder around the people that notice. But it doesn't mean he can eat, now. It doesn't mean he's gotten far enough. He's still too large, to fat, to disgusting, food is still an evil, a poison, separating him from purity.

 

It doesn't mean, deep down, that he's any less worthless.

 

 

(

    Will he ever be?

                               )

 

 

Still, he goes down stairs and makes himself a sandwich, watching his family's relief. He stops in the bathroom on the way back to his room, breaks it into pieces and flushes it down the toilet. Without a trace.

 

Sasuke is tired. Exhausted. He sleeps every chance he can get and still wakes up with bags under his eyes. Everything hurts all the time, his body is sharp and bony, and even sitting causes his legs to lose circulation. Sakura pats him on the back and winces,

"I can feel your spine"

And nothing makes it better anymore. Eating is hell. Not eating is hell. Waking up in the morning is hell. Moving is hell. He wants it to end, wants it to end, anything to stop the way it hurts.

 

He's tired of this, he realizes. He feels no thinner, no more pure, and he knows logically that he's far, far underweight. No clothes fit him, his belt is looped to the tightest hole, yet he feels worse than he did to begin with. He feels larger. The scale goes down further, and Sasuke is no longer proud. He's scared, and he's ashamed when his friends look at him with fear, silently watch as he sips at water through another lunch, despair coloring their faces. People stare sometimes in public, go out of their way on the street to avoid him as though he's a leper. It's not what he wants. He doesn't control his eating anymore. His eating controls him.

 

He wants it back.

 

Moment of weakness, moment of strength. It's all relative. He calls Naruto. He's the only one who still tries to help, despite the fact that the outcome is always the same. Even Itachi no longer wants to deal with it,

 

"Sasuke, please. You can't expect me to sit with you and watch you stare at a few grapes for an hour and never say anything. You can't expect me to watch you die. I can't," his voice wavers, more emotion on his face than Sasuke had ever seen. "I can't do that."

 

Naruto comes at once. He brings soup, something relatively safe, but it's thick and full of vegetables and it actually scares Sasuke. It scares him, and that's a revelation. It scares him to make an effort to eat. He had always worked so hard to do the opposite before, it had snuck up on him that suddenly, eating was going to be difficult. It wasn't something he was choosing not to do. Starving was a compulsion that he was going to have to fight.

 

He finishes two bowls in an hour and sits with Naruto's arms wrapped around him, fighting the building panic. His stomach hurts, and he's angry and sad and incredibly anxious. Everything is out of sorts. Before he knows it, he's crying softly, wishing it could be easier, wishing he could eat, wishing he never had to eat again.

 

"I want," he rasps out after a while, when he's calmed down to the occasional hiccup. "I want this to end. I want to be better."

 

Naruto smiles gently, rubs his arm. "Okay. You can do it. I know it."

 

It's not weeks, it's years. It's forever, he sometimes thinks, that he will always blanch at some foods and he might never well and truly feel good about his body. It's therapy and crying and ugly confrontations, dredging old issues out into the light. And sometimes it's dark thoughts, relapse, wondering if this is the one that finally kills him.

 

But he has friends that stay, through good and bad. He has a life to live, the potential to beat this, to one day be free. He has a will to get better, and maybe that's the only thing that matters, the only thing he ever really needed.

 

It's three years later that Naruto brings bagels to study, and half way through his, Sasuke realizes the significance. He eats it automatically, nearly thoughtlessly, something that was once virtually impossible. He realizes that he could live the rest of his life like this, and a smile breaks across his face. Naruto notices and sends him a questioning look.

 

"Nothing. Just... I'm glad that I'm me again."

 


End file.
